President Trump Signs AI Initiative To Help America Compete In AI Globally

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that will help launch the US government’s own AI play in an effort to compete with other countries, especially China.

The initiative is designed to boost America’s AI industry by re-allocating funding, creating new resources, and devising ways for the country to shape the technology even as it becomes increasingly global.

The initiative however does not include a large amount of funding for AI research.

Five takeaways from the initiative:

Redirect funding: The order will direct federal funding agencies to prioritize investments in artificial intelligence.

Create resources: It will seek to make federal data, computer models, and computing resources available to AI researchers.

Establish standards: It will direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to create standards that foster the development of “reliable, robust, trustworthy, secure, portable, and interoperable AI systems.”

Retrain workers: It will ask agencies to prioritize preparing workers for the changes brought about by AI through apprenticeships, skills programs, and fellowships.

Engage internationally: It will call for a strategy for international collaboration that ensures AI is developed in a way consistent with American “values and interests.”

Jason Furman, a professor at Harvard who served as chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and helped craft that administration’s influential 2016 report on artificial intelligence, says the new AI plan is encouraging, but only a first step.

“The administration’s American AI Initiative includes all of the right elements; the critical test will be to see if they follow through in a vigorous manner,” Furman says. “The plan is aspirational with no details and is not self-executing.”